Sale 2487 - African-American Fine Art, October 4, 2018

24 c JOHN WILSON (1912 - 2015) Untitled (Two Boys in a Streetcar) . Gouache and watercolor on board, 1945. 343x254 mm; 13 1 / 2 x10 inches. Signed and dated in gouache, lower edge. Provenance: Boris Mirski Art Gallery, Boston; private collection, Baltimore. The Boris Mirski Art Gallery was known for supporting young and emerging artists in the 1940s; the founder Boris Chaim Mirksi also opened an art school in addition to his gallery and frame shop on Newbury Street. This charming watercolor by John Wilson is a very scarce example of a work made at the beginning of an illustrious career. Wilson portrays two wide-eyed children in an empty Boston streetcar; they gaze ahead into their future with enthusiasm for what lays ahead of them. In 1945, Wilson had just graduated from the Museum of Fine Arts School with highest honors. In 1947, Wilson graduated from Tufts University while teaching at the Boris Mirski School of Modern Art. John Wilson’s career was greatly shaped by social realism of the 1940s, and he greatly contributed to continuing its visual culture into the 1950s. [10,000/15,000]